We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, June 22, 2015

Wounded Warrior Project: Marketing wars, indirectly, on the backs of the wounded——and getting rich in the process.

Click here to access article by Phil Murray from The Greanville Post.
You have surely spotted one [of] their commercials. They spend millions airing them. They normally feature a celebrity, like Trace Adkins, or Dean Norris. The message is always the same: Help our wounded “warriors”. In my time we called ourselves “soldiers.” Now, when we need to cosmeticize our ugly wars, and the public infantilization via television allows for such whorish grandiloquence, the old GIs have become “warriors.”

These campaigns, besides the questionable use of the funds collected (the CEO, Steven Nardizzi makes $375,000 a year), are devious instruments to propagandize imperial wars (a variant of the “support our troops” shopworn, dishonest appeal).
So, I can't help wondering, who are they as in "their commercials"? Usually an author employs a meaningless abstraction such as "the powers that be". While Murray exposes the exploitation of veterans and today's soldiers to serve the ulterior motives of others, unfortunately his focus on the main target is a bit blurred by mentioning all sorts of "evil-doers" such as the "billionaires", "naked American corporate power", "oligarchic power", "American elites bent on world domination", etc. 

What needs to be done in the future is for people such as Murray to narrow their focus on the capitalist ruling class so that it becomes more distinguishable. If we fail to identify the source of this problem and many others, we will continue to elude effective methods of solving them. By identifying the source of this exploitation of veterans and soldiers clearly as the capitalist ruling class, then it is only a short distance away from identifying the system of capitalism as the main source of the problem. Then revolution becomes the solution, and methods of organizing such a feat become an effective response to this and of many other associated problems such as imperialist policies, poverty for the many and riches for a tiny few, militarization of police, racism, 24/7 surveillance of citizens, climate destabilization, etc.